Enbridge Inc. is proceeding largely unencumbered with plans to spend $8.8 billion in the U.S. to transport greater volumes of petroleum to the Gulf Coast and other markets than TransCanada would with its Keystone XL pipeline project from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast.
Rather than building a single new pipeline, Enbridge is replacing smaller, existing pipeline with bigger pipes, adding pumping capacity and installing new supply lines alongside existing ones.
The Calgary, Alberta, energy pipeline and storage company is forging ahead even though it has been bedeviled recently by high-profile oil spills.
TransCanada's Keystone XL plan, and its additional 830,000 barrels a day, snagged on the so-called presidential permit process, in which the State Department conducts environmental and other reviews of infrastructure projects that cross American borders.
But Enbridge, which runs the longest pipeline system in Canada and the U.S., can proceed without new presidential permits ? and the rigorous review they bring ? because the company already has permits from the initial construction years ago and because the physical work will take place in the United States.
"We can increase the capacity crossing the border by anywhere from 800,000 barrels a day to 1 million barrels a day without the need for a new presidential permit," Steve Wuori, president of the company's liquid pipeline division, said during a March 7 investor conference call.
"And I think that's very important in the politically charged environment in which we find ourselves," he said.
The task of determining the safety or wisdom of Enbridge pipeline routes falls on a patchwork of local, county and state jurisdictions through the Midwest and East, most of which lack intensive pipeline expertise.
"All these companies are going, 'How are we going to get oil from Canada to U.S. refineries without this mess? How do we avoid the political issues?'" said Brigham A. McCown, former head of the top federal pipeline regulator and attorney of international energy transportation law.
"And the answer is, find an existing pipeline that crosses the border and add capacity to that pipeline. It's no different from taking a two-lane road and turning it into a four-lane highway."
Enbridge, which earned nearly $1 billion last year, has not attracted the national attention of the Keystone XL project largely because of the piecemeal ? and still early ? nature of its upgrades. Only a few environmental groups have raised alarms thus far.
Yet some of the projects would be significant.
The company aims to build a larger line alongside its pipeline from Flanagan, Ill., to Cushing, Okla.; add a line alongside a newly acquired pipeline that runs from Cushing to the Texas Gulf Coast, a project that it's splitting with another pipeline company; and increase the capacity of a line from northwest Indiana through Michigan. Smaller projects are planned as well.
Most of the changes are expected to be finished in 2014. Once completed, they would push an additional 310,000 barrels a day through Michigan toward Ontario and take 850,000 barrels a day to the Gulf Coast.
Enbridge spokeswoman Lorraine Little said the company's upgrades aren't an attempt to avoid the scrutiny that fell upon Keystone XL; they're driven by surging oil demand in different parts of North America.
"The process is what it is," she said. "We have to abide by what's been laid out for us in order to complete a project. And so if it means going state by state and complying with their regulatory requirements, that's what we have to do."
Enbridge's recent spills raise questions about its safety record.
The company was recently fined $3.7 million for a Marshall, Mich., spill that dumped 20,082 barrels of oil in the Kalamazoo River in 2010, the biggest penalty ever from the nation's pipeline authority, the U.S. Transportation Department's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
Source: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-enbridge-pipeline-20120818,0,5072792.story?track=rss
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